An Australian Historian at the Dawn of Apartheid:
Fred Alexander in South Africa, 1949-50

Peter Limb

University of Western Australia

This article examines
a little-known aspect of Australia's relations with South Africa via a case
study of the visit of eminent Australian historian Fred Alexander (1899-1996)
to South Africa in 1949-50; a time of the dawn of the apartheid system and
the `changing of the guard' in Australian politics. In so doing it throws
new light on intellectual contacts between the two countries, the response
of historians to the onset of apartheid, and the nature of Australian historiography.

Australia's dealings
with Africa in general, and South Africa in particular, are more complex than
many assume. They comprise a wide range of contacts from military involvement
and conflict over apartheid to migration and cultural and economic interaction.1Such relations, Gareth Evans and Bruce Grant argue, developed
on an ad hoc basis. However, they are incorrect to state that Australia `lacks
a history of involvement in the continent'.2Scholars have focused on diplomatic and economic, but neglected
intellectual, ties.3This
essay analyses the involvement of Australian historians in these relations,
focusing on the significance of the visit of the distinguished Australian
historian Fred Alexander to South Africa in 1949-50.

Australia and South
Africa: Historical Relations

The West Coast of Australia looks out towards
Africa across the Indian Ocean that physically separates yet at the same time
connects the two lands. Historical ties, aided by interlocking sea-routes,
spun a loose yet at times compelling web of socio-political linkages between
peoples. Some of the earliest known European contacts with Australia had African
connections. Willem De Vlaming in 1696 was accompanied to the West Coast by
two `blacks ... taken with us at the Cape'. He likened the mia mia's of Swan
River Aborigines to the housing of Cape Khoikoi. The destination of the convicts
that landed at Sydney in 1788 could well have been Africa, as Britain toyed
with the idea of locating the penal colony in West Africa.4
Explorers such as John Forrest and Ernest Giles even compared their exploits
with those of the `discoverers' of Africa 5.

Isolated European
settler societies in South Africa and Australia had features in common: traditions
as British colonies; origins as garrison outposts; pastoral-led growth; and
ability to attract overseas labour and capital.6Both were Southern Hemisphere societies `whose environments,
indigenous peoples and thus historical experiences of colonialism were markedly
different from imperial expansion in northern "new worlds"'.7Because, more recently, trade with Asia has dwarfed that with
Africa, there has been a tendency among Australian writers to minimise the
`African connection'. Nevertheless, appreciation of historical and cultural
ties aids the understanding of the significance of Australia-Africa relations.

Visits to Australia
of ships from Europe via South Africa helped break down settler isolation.
When the infant colonies of New South Wales and the Swan River Colony foundered,
they were succoured by food imports from the Cape.8
Donald Denoon notes that ties born of a pre-Suez shipping route soon atrophied,9
yet connections lingered. Before 1914 trade in timber and livestock between
Western Australia and South African ports aided the integration of the colony
into the capitalist world economy.10
In depressions of the 1890s, 1900s and 1930s workers from both countries sought
employment by crossing the Indian Ocean.11

The British Empire
legacy engendered common approaches and a degree of contact between colonies.12In the nineteenth century, they shared British law, culture,
manufactures, and administrators.13The zeal with which Australian colonies embraced British
colonial wars led inexorably to military contacts. Forces that in 1895 invaded
the Transvaal at the behest of Cecil Rhodes included an Australian Brigade.14
In the South African War (1899-1902) Australian troop involvement was substantial,
and included many Australians working in South Africa, and a group of Aboriginal
trackers.15
Other expressions of `colonial solidarity' took place. In 1904, many Australian
parliamentarians expressed outrage at plans to deploy Chinese indentured labour
in the Transvaal.16Prime
Minister Alfred Deakin in 1906 protested against `interference' when Britain
sought to prevent the execution of black fighters of the Bambata Rebellion
in Natal.17

From the perspective
of indigenous peoples, colonialism was disastrous: dispossession; high mortality;
exploitation. Conquest engendered comparable patterns of resistance, even
if its scale in the two countries often was different.18
Settlers adopted similar historico-legal fictions of terra nullius and their
constructions of `Aboriginality' were rooted in common colonialist discourses.19
Paternalistic, discriminatory policies on land, labour, and education were
alike. Blacks were denied land and citizenship rights, herded into reserves,
paid minimal wages and subject to draconian segregation and legal prohibitions
on inter-marriage and free movement.20
Indigenous women of both lands were victims of gross sexual and labour exploitation.
They were used as agents of settler control against black males but also resisted
white rule.21
In contrast, white women were part of a `civilizing mission'. Lady Barker
lived in Natal and Western Australia. Her memoirs typify the stereotypes held
by many colonists. Afrikaners (of whom she had met only one) were `always
extremely dirty,' and `behind the rest of the civilised world'. Her Zulu servants
were `good-tempered and docile'.22Stereotyping also was apparent in prison administration.
Rottnest Island (WA) and Robben Island (South Africa) both functioned as penal
isles that brutally incarcerated anti-colonial fighters who were forced to
work in quarries yet at times engineered remarkable escapes.23

Before 1960, when
South Africa became a republic, there were other similarities: a common head
of state; the Westminster system; Dominion status.24
There were differences. Australian nationalism was slower to cut the umbilical
cord to Britain, a tendency attributed by Fred Alexander to Australia's greater
ethnic homogeneity and isolation that encouraged persistence of Anglophone
feeling.25 Britain
used both states to expand its Empire.26
By the 1920s they were effectively sub-imperialisms, answerable to the League
of Nations for administration of New Guinea and South West Africa (Namibia)
respectively. Like South African rulers, Australian leaders, such as Robert
Menzies and H. V. Evatt, remained aloof from African nationalists in the Commonwealth.
In his memoirs, Menzies maintains that many Africans lacked `the capacity
to vote'.27According
to a colleague, he had `no brotherly feeling towards coloured people'.28By 1960, Australia was seen by Britain as still implacably
opposed to, if resigned to accept, decolonisation'.29

In this period, there
was strong Australian bipartisan support for white South Africa, based on
legal doctrines of non-interference in domestic affairs and support for the
`White Australia' policy. Liberal governments broadly supported South Africa
from 1949 to 1960. In 1952, Australia defended Pretoria at the United Nations
during massive internal defiance campaigns. The Australian Foreign Minister
conceded privately that in 1957 he had made `as good a plug as I could for
South Africa'.30
After Menzies refused to condemn the 1960 Sharpeville massacre, South African
Prime Minister Verwoerd informed him that he was the `best friend South Africa
has'.31 There
was a common fear of blacks. In 1953, apartheid leader Malan stated in Parliament
that `if ever India knocks on the door of Australia we will prove that we
are a friend of Australia'. South Africa even attempted to construct a `sisters
of the Southern Hemisphere' axis.32
Menzies, who maintained close personal contact with South African ambassadors,
torpedoed attempts by more liberal ministers to strengthen measures against
South Africa in 1961, and in 1963 overrode departmental advice against allowing
the establishment of a South African military attaché.33
This then was the political context in which Australian academics of the period
of the onset of apartheid operated.

Australian Historians
and South Africa

Before examining the writings of Australian historians
on South Africa, it is germane to consider the broader intellectual framework.
Both countries inherited a British education system that was adapted to colonial
requirements. A few examples will suffice. At the turn of the century, the
Western Australian Superintendent of Education, motivated by white demands
to exclude Aborigines from schools, deemed it vital to obtain a copy of a
Cape Town Supreme Court judgement upholding the expulsion of `coloured' children
from `white' schools.34
Kingsley Fairbridge, born in South Africa in 1885, migrated to Pinjarra where
in 1912 he founded the Fairbridge Farm School for disadvantaged British children.35

Scientific and literary
contacts also developed in a settler cocoon. There was considerable scientific
cooperation, frequently based on close personal ties.36
Imaginative representations of the two societies often emphasised common themes
of landscape or colonialism.37
In a recent re-assessment, Donald Denoon depicts intellectual contacts as
one-way; Australians wrote on South Africa, not vice versa.38
There are exceptions. In 1941, historian C. W. de Kiewiet contrasted Australia's
strategic access to cheap grazing land with South Africa's reliance on cheap
black labour. In the 1980s, Arthur Davey made a detailed critique of the `Breaker'
Morant legend. More recently, ex-Ambassador David Tothill has analysed diplomatic
relations.39
Other intellectual connections include the Rhodes Trust of the University
of Oxford, whose beneficiaries included Australian historian Sir Keith Hancock.40
Another is the Round Table movement that sought to encourage fidelity to Empire
among Dominion intellectuals. Through his membership of the Round Table, Hancock
met South African leader Jan Smuts.41

Given such contacts,
it is not surprising that some Australian historians became interested in
South Africa. G. A. Wood, Professor of History at Sydney University, campaigned
strongly against the Boer War.42
G. C. Henderson of Adelaide University did research in South Africa for a
book on Sir George Grey, and later sought to rationalise the holdings of archival
papers deposited in Australia and South Africa to better reflect their place
of origin.43Hancock
took a more sustained interest, becoming the first Australian historian to
become an authority on African affairs. His masterful Survey of Commonwealth
Affairs (1937) took him to West and South Africa where he investigated history,
economics, and politics.44
In 1954, Hancock accepted a British mission to evaluate the future of colonial
rule in Uganda. He helped defuse, by his sensitivity to African viewpoints,
an impasse between colonial and Buganda rulers in such a way as to avoid recourse
to a `Rhodesian' style of governance.45
He began to grapple with complex questions of Eurocentrism and the need to
view African cultures in their own light.

Hancock's extensive
writings on South Africa have prompted historians Saul Dubow and Shula Marks
to regard this corpus as his `most sustained and significant historiographical
endeavour'. They compare him with Smuts, pointing to the two men's common
views on the Commonwealth and nationalism, but conclude that both `failed
to comprehend that their ethnocentrism, rooted in the white dominions of South
Africa and Australia, amounted to a patriotism of race'. Hancock was little
influenced by rising African nationalism, and barely critical of white territorial
conquest. He did stress the complexity of ethnic relations in South Africa
and the depth of humanity of some black leaders.46 Later, in 1979, more sensitive to issues of race and class,
he urged young historians to investigate not so much themes such as Australia
in the Boer War, but rather `Australian reinforcements of the ideology and
leadership of white labour in South Africa'.47

Fred Alexander and
South Africa

Another Australian
historian developed a close interest in South Africa. Frederick Alexander
was born in Blackflat, Victoria, in 1899. He was educated at Melbourne High
School and the University of Melbourne, from whence he graduated in 1920.
In 1924, he obtained a Masters degree at Balliol College, Oxford, winning
the Herbertson Prize in History. Among his Balliol colleagues was Hancock.
In the same year, Alexander was appointed Assistant Lecturer in the Department
of History and Economics at the University of Western Australia (UWA).48
A prolific public intellectual and community leader, he became a titan of
the Perth cultural scene: foundation Professor of History at UWA (1948-65);
founder of the Festival of Perth (1953); Director of Adult Education (1941-54);
Chair of the WA Branch of the League of Nations Union (1927-39); and Chair
of Library Board of WA (1954-1982). The WA State Library is named in his honour.

At UWA Alexander taught
chiefly British Empire and European history, combining this core curriculum
with insights into contemporary events. In his lectures of the 1920s, he paid
particular attention to problems of Dominion status, including South African
attitudes which, he stressed, were `very complicated by the presence of the
Dutch and nationalist element'.49
In 1925, in a UWA Extension Lecture in rural Katanning, he stressed that the
new Afrikaner Nationalist `Pact' government was diverging from the pro-Imperial
policy followed by Australia.50
In the thirties he wrote and lectured on changes in Commonwealth relations,
especially on the 1931 Statute of Westminster and 1937 Imperial Conference.51
In 1934, he published From Empire to Commonwealth, a textbook for schools
that dealt extensively with (white) South African history. It was replete
with colonial stereotypes such as the myth of an `empty land' before European
settlement, and missionary `zealots' whose mission stations became places
of refuge for `lazy Hottentots'. Nevertheless, the focus of the book indicates
an intellectual interest in the region by Australian academics. It contrasted
the drawn out negotiations over Australian federation with the more centralised
and much `closer union' of the South African colonies in 1910. Australia,
with its `dying race' of Aborigines had, in comparison with South Africa,
`no native troubles'. Alexander also predicted problems in realising the policies
of segregation then gathering momentum among South African whites.52
He continued to write on South Africa and by 1939 was convinced that its path
was now `very different' to that of Australia.53

Alexander was very
much a product of his Melbourne and Oxford days, steeped in the traditions
of Australian culture and British historiography. Yet he was receptive to
other trends. As he taught chiefly `non-Australian history' until late in
his career,54he
was likely to absorb comparative and Commonwealth, as well as Australian,
historiographical trends. He claimed to have given most of his leisure in
the ten years before World War II `to the attempt to increase public knowledge,
and to stimulate informal discussion among West Australians, of international
affairs'.55
This obsession inclined him to an activist stance and a sort of cosmopolitanism.
He sought to build public awareness of world affairs through his role in the
League of Nations Union and later in the United Nations Association of Australia
and the Australian Institute of International Affairs.56
He spoke at public meetings in Perth and rural towns against the 1935-36 Italian
invasion of Ethiopia. In this regard, he was somewhat ahead of public opinion.
In 1923 Australia had opposed the admittance of Ethiopia to the League of
Nations on the white supremacist basis that the independent kingdom was not
`civilized' enough and lest, in the words of Joseph Cook, it should `question
Australia as to the treatment of the natives of New Guinea'. During the Italian
invasion, Australia was a strong advocate of appeasement, although newspapers
such as The Age and The West Australian (for which Alexander regularly wrote)
condemned Italy.57

Travel overseas further
broadened Alexander's views. In 1932-33, as a Rhodes Travelling Fellow in
Europe, he visited Nazi Germany and France,58
and attended the League of Nations. In 1939-40 he was a Rockefeller Fellow
in the United States where he served as Personal Ministerial Assistant in
the Australian Legation. In 1950, he was a Carnegie Travelling Fellow in the
United States.59

The least-known overseas
project of Alexander at this time is the four months he spent in South Africa
as a Carnegie Fellow, from 2 December 1949 to 15 April 1950. Before he left
he gathered background material through correspondence with leading scholars,
such as the American political scientist Gwendolen Carter.60
He took copious notes from authoritative works, such as the history by C.
W. de Kiewiet, and read widely on topics ranging from the Afrikaner Broederbond
to labour relations. The victory of the Afrikaner Nationalists under D. F.
Malan the year before had focused his attention more closely on South Africa
and his public lectures began to pay more attention to the country. In a UWA
Summer School address of January 1949 on changing patterns of the British
Commonwealth, he repeatedly referred to South African examples of centrifugal
tendencies. The prospect of a republic in South Africa was mooted, and its
rallying to the British Empire in World War II was contrasted with rumours
of Afrikaner sympathy with Nazism. He noted how poorly informed Australians
were on South Africa; the `few points of contact' with `people who live under
conditions at once similar to yet very different' from Australia. He told
listeners that the Union Jack, capable of evoking common cause among Australians,
might suggest to others `a period of national subordination' as a reminder
of `the humiliation of a Bloemfontein' -- a reference to the British victory
over Afrikaners in 1902. His choice of symbols, as in earlier works, thus
remained those of white, not black, Africans.61
But his close monitoring of events enabled him to include a discussion of
the rise of apartheid in an article of September 1949 for The Herald Yearbook.62
Soon, however, he would be face to face with the phenomenon and compelled
to consider black views.

In South Africa, Alexander
traveled widely and met with English South African and Afrikaner leaders,
including Field-Marshall Smuts, Prime Minister Malan, the liberal Helen Suzman,
and others. He also met black leaders. In the Orange Free State he spent an
hour discussing black politics with the recently elected President of the
African National Congress (ANC), Dr. James Moroka. At the black college of
Fort Hare in the Eastern Cape he held talks with another ANC leader, Professor
Z. K. Matthews, and in Durban met Indian political leaders.63

In several lectures,
Alexander compared Australia with South Africa. Speaking in April 1950 in
Cape Town, he stressed the remarkable similarity in both countries of the
revolutions caused by mineral discoveries and how settlers had `developed
the land in defiance of the ideas of the authorities'. The greatest contrast,
he argued, was the relative homogeneity of Australia's population that had
spawned `a distinct Australian nationalism'.64
Later, in his farewell speech, broadcast on South African radio, he deplored
the habit of both Boer and British South African politicians of `flog[ging]
into continuous activity political, racial and cultural differences', in contrast
to Australia where, he claimed, economics predominated.65
At the end of the trip he also visited Rhodesia where he stayed at Government
House. In Salisbury he delivered a lecture critical of the excessive parochialism
of South Africans; their obsession with `the minutiae of Afrikaner history',
a practice amounting to `antiquarianism disguised as history'.66

Despite these abrasive
ideas, Alexander was able to interact with Afrikaners. The empiricism that
permeated contemporary historiography in Anglo-Australian universities lent
his approach an objectivity67
that was to aid his rapport with Afrikaners. He very `deliberately set out
to try to get to know the Afrikaner point of view',68
seeking first to `soak' himself in Afrikaner culture in Cape Town before imposing
himself on Afrikaner `farmers ... to get them to discuss matters ... directly
and realistically'. In this quest he was encouraged by the Vice-Chancellor
of the University of Cape Town, T. B. Davie, who urged him to visit `poor
whites' such as the woodcutters of rural Knysna.69
Alexander was alert to what he heard about the recent growth of bilingualism
in the press and judiciary, and the rise of Afrikaner linguistic nationalism.70
Neither was he above playing off English versus Afrikaner South Africans,
each of whom appeared to enjoy his comments directed at the other.71
The white English Natalian, he wrote, `is every whit as racially minded as
the Afrikaner and just about as sensitive to anything that smacks of criticism'.72
His occasional boldness in criticising state policy was forgiven by the authorities.
They waived on his behalf the rules against broadcasts on contemporary politics,
insisting merely that he change a single phrase in an address so that it might
refer instead to the government's alleged policy to deprive `coloureds' of
the vote.73
This official tolerance of criticism, at a time of rising state suppression
of dissent, was induced partly by Alexander's careful diplomacy. He made a
point of personally contacting cabinet ministers and, on the advice of Australian
High Commissioner Alfred Stirling, who himself had learnt Afrikaans and written
on Afrikaans literature,74openly
expressed interest in Afrikaner culture. Stirling urged him to attend the
Voortrekker Memorial inauguration and opened doors for him to the administration.
Prime Minister Malan told Stirling that he was most interested in Alexander's
visit and pleased that he would be based part of his time in the bastion of
Afrikanerdom, Stellenbosch.75
These gambits succeeded. Alexander was invited to give a public lecture at
Stellenbosch University, which had a certain interest in Australia occasioned
by the presence there since the 1920s of Australian academics. He later was
invited back to deliver an address before the Principal.76

Setting sail for England
on the Orient Line, Alexander continued to record his impressions of South
Africa. He wrote (on the ship's stationery) lecture notes dealing with South
Africa's `native' policy and problems of white settler societies.77
At Chatham House in London he addressed the Royal Institute of International
Affairs on the topic of South African politics. In response to a question
about Australia's right to criticise South African racial policies, he compared
the University of Western Australia's much greater tolerance of `non-white'
students with the restrictive racial policies of apartheid.78

At this time Alexander
sent a series of articles to the Australian press. In one he remarked upon
the eagerness of South Africans to express their concern at `the marked deterioration
in race relationships' to `an Australian who obviously stood "above the
battle" and had little to live down beyond the persistent success of
his compatriots in test cricket'. White South Africans, despite their differing
political persuasions, in private mostly agreed with the need for some sort
of segregation. Many doubted whether extreme apartheid would ever work. Political
party organisation, he estimated, lay somewhere between Australian and United
States systems, and was moving more towards an American model of obsession
with securing office. They gave artificial prominence to `racial, cultural
and religious differences' though deeper economic forces were advancing urbanisation
and threatening the environment in a rush for mineral riches and high returns
from crops. In these dispatches Alexander drew attention to how a visitor
to South Africa soon learns that the Boer War is still a vital issue, and
that the term `concentration camp' means quite different things to an Australian
than to a South African. He noted astutely, despite the rather over-optimistic
impression of some trade union leaders (with whom he spoke) that the attitudes
of white employees to black workers were improving, that this was the case
only among a minority of whites.79
Trade unionism in South Africa, he argued elsewhere, was undergoing marked
changes, with a majority of white employees now Afrikaner-speaking, and many
unions under attack from government.80
This interest in class issues (his files from the trip include a considerable
number of press and academic reports on black worker rights and unions) dates
back to his earlier involvement in the Workers Educational Association.81

Unlike his contemporary,
Keith Hancock, Alexander was more sensitive to the growing signs of assertive
African nationalism. Whilst exaggerating the power of Pan Africanism among
ANC members he was aware of its growing prominence. He observed that ANC leaders
`may for the time being discourage sporadic strikes or riots', but perceived
their ties to a popular base and was convinced that the `doctrine now being
preached - and spread by migrant labourers back to the kraals in the native
reserves - would seem to be one of developing an African national State'.
Writing at the height of the Cold War (legislation to ban the Communist Party
would soon be introduced in both countries) he discounted reports of external
communist influence among blacks who were, he claimed, attracted to communism
`merely because it was a revolutionary programme of action'. He also encountered
what in the 1980s became known as the `Packing for Perth' syndrome: he was
amazed that so many whites speculated about which country `would offer the
most acceptable refuge' if white rule should be threatened.82

Whilst Alexander was
overseas the incumbent Australian Labor Party government was defeated at the
polls. From South Africa he kept up a correspondence with Menzies, an acquaintance
from his Melbourne student days, and with Menzies' minister Paul Hasluck and
the ALP's Kim Beazley Senior, both of whom had been junior colleagues in the
UWA History Department. Alexander, ever the objective historian and diplomat,
congratulated Menzies and commiserated with Beazley. He told Menzies that
`Australia's reputation now stands very high in the Union'.83
To Gwendolen Carter he confided that the swing to Menzies had been much larger
than he had expected, and pointed to the significance of the Catholic vote,
citing the vote against Labor in Leederville, then the `most Catholic suburb
in Perth'. Ironically, given Menzies' continued support for white South Africa,
Alexander was amazed to be told by a South African Nationalist Party Senator
and others that the 1949 Liberal victory in Australia was a `retrograde step
... a swing back to "Imperialism"'84- a clear reference to Menzies' Empire loyalty.

The contemporary impact
of Alexander's visit may have been greater than posterity has chronicled.
Recordings of his impressions of South Africa made before he left the country
were broadcast on the ABC.85Upon his return to Australia, he continued
this interest, returning to themes of constitutional change and racial segregation
in South Africa in further radio talks in late 1950 and 1952.86
The 1952 defiance campaigns particularly caught his imagination. In a broadcast
he sought to explain to Australian listeners the intensity of black resistance
led by the ANC, and how non-violent protests could easily turn to riots in
crowded and harshly policed black townships. His use of terms such as `primitive
Bantu' to refer to the `vast majority' of South African blacks betrays a lingering
paternalistic discourse. Yet, he was appreciative of, and sensitive to, ANC
political aims and tactics in the face of apartheid. The defiance campaign
was a `tribute both to the organization of the ANC and to the readiness of
so many of the rank-and-file of its supporters to resist by peaceful means'.
With the Cold War continuing, he felt obliged to expose what he saw as communist
attempts to exploit black protests. But he discounted claims of serious communist
infiltration of the ANC. Wary of rising anti-white African nationalism, he
contrasted the concomitant increasing paranoia of white settlers in Africa
with white Australians who, inhabiting a country with `only a handful of non-Europeans',
could afford to be `dispassionate and detached' in their `criticism of native
policies elsewhere'.87
Alexander also continued to write on South Africa. At a 1951 UWA Adult Education
Summer School on `War and Peace', he observed that even in South Africa there
was growing recognition of economic interdependence. He pointed to the retardation
of a distinctively South African nationalism due to the persistence of Afrikaner-British
South African rivalry but also (presciently) predicted that, if present trends
continued, then South Africa would become a republic within a few years.88In 1953, he published a book on Commonwealth history. 89
In 1957, he urged Australian academics to protest against apartheid and to
recognise the danger of a loss of university autonomy in Australia similar
to what had happened to universities under apartheid.90

In these works, Alexander
was more concerned with issues of good governance than with black liberation.
However, his South African experiences gave him insights into the nascent
black political Renaissance. They also suggested further readings, some of
which, such as Eddie Roux's Time Longer than Rope (1948), were more attuned
to rising black movements.91
Personal contacts appear to have been significant in this regard. In retrospect,
his meetings with black leaders (some of whom would soon be charged with treason)
were remarkable for a time when no African colonies had gained independence
and when the idea of black power had not been aired in Australia. Whilst raised
on a heritage that privileged the history of European `great men' over histories
of indigenous peoples, he was also influenced by the recent independence of
India, the significance of which he referred to in 1949 when chiding Menzies
on his pro-British foreign policy.92
By 1950, the White Man's Club of the British Empire was no more. Alexander's
views moved with the times. His willingness to meet on equal terms with both
blacks and Afrikaners, each in their own way `enemies' of British hegemony
in the region, and his attention to issues of class and African nationalism,
marks him, like Hancock, as a transitionary figure in Australian historiography
between traditions of Empire and more independent approaches. Australian nationalism
still influenced him. On more than one occasion he compared the failings of
South African ethnic nationalisms with a `superior' Australian nationalism
based on economic rationalism. His South African writings also indicate a
willingness to mix economics and other social sciences with history. This
probably was due to the influenced of economic historian Edward Shann, who
first employed him at UWA,93
and also to the wider tendencies towards such a rapprochement in Anglo-American
historiography,94
as well as his interest in world affairs. Contemporary history is always a
difficult task for an historian to write,95
but he had already confronted this in his 1943 study of Australia's role in
World War II96
and in earlier works on North American and European political history. In
this connection, it is unfortunate that he never found the time to accept
an offer by Oxford University Press to publish a 40,000 word impressionistic
analysis of South Africa.97

However, Alexander
neither engaged with South African history from an Africanist perspective
nor succeeded in stimulating substantial Australian research on Africa. His
use of Afrikaner, rather than black, personalities and symbols (Smuts and
the Voortrekker Monument) to illustrate diversity in the British Commonwealth
in a 1951 address suggesting he had not completely renounced the Eurocentrism
permeating his 1934 From Empire to Commonwealth.98
A sense of sympathy with oppressed blacks did not extend to taking up the
challenge to help write their hidden history. He was not alone in such views.
It was not until later in the decade that the first rumblings of a new, Afrocentric,
African history emerged in Europe and independent Africa. Notwithstanding
these attitudes, Fred Alexander's African sojourn provides an interesting
insight into a little-known aspect of Australian intellectual history, and
his writings show a depth of analysis unusual given contemporary white attitudes
to black peoples.

Conclusion

Alexander retired in 1966 and took little further
part in discourses or debates on South Africa. Other Australians now intervened.
Geoffrey Blainey, for instance, wrote a seminal article on the Jameson Raid,99
and various academics became involved in the nascent Australian anti-apartheid
movement.100
By the late 1960s, as Australia's policies on immigration and indigenous affairs
shifted, so its support for South Africa declined.101Australia made quiet diplomatic protests that, after 1973,
became more strident and bipartisan. By the 1980s, many academics expressed
strong views on apartheid and sanctions.

Australians, Alexander
mused in 1950, had `hitherto taken little advantage' of an `atmosphere of
friendly respect' to them present in South Africa.102
Contacts remained muted for the next four decades due to politics. Australia's
relations with South Africa nevertheless have remained the most intense of
its ties with African countries. The twentieth century began with Australians
galloping to war for the British Empire on the South African veldt and with
Australian Federation. It is ending with fresh attempts at political organisation
in Southern Africa and with memories of recent Australian military involvement
in Africa (Namibia, Somalia, Rwanda). As the millennium beckons, Australian-South
African relations take on new hues. Exchanges between universities, markedly
reduced in the period of sanctions, have grown since the first South African
free elections in 1994. Trade is again buoyant after the long winter of apartheid.
A recent government report on Southern Africa calls on Australia to assist
political reform, enhance trade and cultural exchange, and encourage greater
public awareness of Africa to counter stereotypes rooted in history that continue
to loom in the Australian imagination.103
These are important goals to realise given the recent resurgence in Australia
of ethnic-based chauvinism and in South Africa of xenophobia. In this context,
historians can help counter prejudice by interpreting the broad vistas and
values of a country's history, as Alexander sought to do. Yet, the measured
mildness of his critique of trends apparent at the dawn of apartheid seems
in retrospect quite inadequate, suggesting that sometimes the striving of
historians to balance `objectivity' with principle can be a precarious activity.

13. Sir George Grey was Governor of South Australia
(1841-5) and the Cape Colony (1854-61). Richard Bourke (Cape, NSW) and
Sir Henry Barkly (Cape, Victoria) served in similar capacities. Sir Frederick
Broome was Colonial Secretary of Natal (1875) and Governor of WA (1883).

19. B. Scates, `"We Are Not ... Aboriginal
... We Are Australian": William Lane, Racism and the Construction
of Aboriginality', Labour History, no.72, 1997, p. 37.

20. From 1937 to 1954 Aborigines in Perth were
forced to carry passbooks akin to those used under apartheid: A.J. Connolly,
White City: A Critical Legal History of the Prohibited Area Proclamation
and Pass System in the Perth Area 1927-54, LLB (Hons.), UWA, 1991, pp.
35, 54.

21. See L. Ryan, `Indigenous Women as Agents:
A Comparison of the Lives of Three Indigenous Women Agents in Colonial
Society', paper 58, ANZAAS Congress 1988.

23. Peter Limb, `"Of Deeds Most Foul and
Vile": A Short Comparative History of Robben and Rottnest Penal Islands',
AFSAAP Review vol. 20, no. 1, 1998, pp. 15-9. David Stuurman, who
escaped from Robben Island in 1820, was recaptured and sentenced to transportation
to NSW.

52. FA and H.B. Feilman, From Empire to Commonwealth:
The Story of the British Empire from its Origins to the Present Day,
Beers-Carrolls, Perth, 1934, pp. 71-8, 252-4. Suggested reading was similarly
stereotyped, consisting chiefly of pro-Imperial fiction and popular settler
accounts.

54. FA, Australia since Federation, p. v. It `was
rare at any time' for WA historians `to link local history with a wider
international perspective': G.C. Bolton, `Western Australia Reflects on
its Past', in C.T. Stannage (ed.), A New History of Western Australia,
UWA Press, 1981, pp.677-91.

63. H. Suzman to FA, 3 April 1950, UWAA 337/4/4/1-22;
FA, On Campus and Off, UWA Press, Perth, 1987, pp. 66-74, 104-6.
Alexander recounted his meeting with Moroka to the Royal Australasian
College of Physicians: FA, `Australia's Role in the Contemporary Commonwealth',
Medical Journal of Australia, January 1952; FA to Stirling, 17
February 1950, UWAA, 336/1.

66. Rhodesia Herald, 9 March 1950; FA, `An Australian
Historian's Tentative Impressions of Current Trends in the Union of South
Africa', lecture to Rhodesia National Affairs Association 10 March 1950,
UWAA 337/7/1-4. FA, Canadians and Foreign Policy, Cheshire, Melbourne,
1960, p. 98, criticises the `pathetic if not tragic preoccupations of
some Afrikaner historians at Stellenbosch with the most minute details'
of the Boer War and the Great Trek.

67. Alexander would later justify, in a different
context, the combination of `subjective experiences with the fruits of
others more objective scholarship': FA, Australia since Federation, p.
v. See also Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question"
and the American Historical Profession, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 1988.

74. Stirling `now speaks very good Afrikaans and
has established very warm relations with Afrikaner artists and others':
FA to G. Carter 13 January 1950. Menzies concurred with the high estimation
of Stirling's qualities: Menzies to FA 6 May 1950: both in UWAA 336/1.

78. FA, `South Africa Today: an Australian View',
transcript of a talk to the Royal Institute of International Affairs 20
June 1950, UWAA, 337/7/1-4.

79. FA, `As a West Australian Sees South Africa',
West Australian, 22 April and 3 May 1950. Alexander also contrasted the
operation of the Parliaments of the two countries: FA, `The Zoo Train',
ABC recording, 12 January 1950, transcript, ABC Archives, Sydney.

81. It could also be linked to claims that Australian
history is the epitome of a `proletarian' current rooted in its convict
past. Louis Hartz, The Founding of New Societies: Studies in the History
of the US, Latin America, South Africa, Canada and Australia, Harcourt,
New York, 1964, p.3, in a now largely discredited work, depicts Boer South
Africa as representative of `bourgeois', and British South Africa and
Australia as representative of `radical', traditions.

85. B.H. Molesworth (ABC Sydney) to FA 11 November
1949, FA to Molesworth 12 January 1950, UWAA 336/1. On Christmas Eve 1949
Alexander sent three discs to Sydney: `First Impressions of Cape Town',
`Picnic Politics' and `With the Voortrekkers'. He considered `a cricket
commentary with a difference' on sport and politics: FA to Molesworth,
24 December 1949, 12 January 1950. The talks, recorded on shellac, have
disintegrated: personal communication with Geoff Harris, ABC archivist,
19 November, 17 December 1998.

100. See C. Jennett, Signals to South Africa: the
Australian Anti-Apartheid Movement', in C. Jennett and R. Stewart (eds.)
Politics of the Future: the Role of Social Movement, Macmillan,
Melbourne, 1989, pp.98-155.

101. J. Clark, `"The Wind of Change"
in Australia: Aborigines and the International Politics of Race, 1960-1972',
International History Review, v. 20 no. 1, 1998, pp.89-117.